It is always better to be slightly underdressed.
Coco Chanel
A lot of what we see, read, hear and consume is about
adding. You need to add more servings of fruits and vegetables. You need to add
an exercise plan. You need to add some key pieces to your wardrobe or a new
positive habit.
And so it is with subtracting. You need to cut calories. You
need to de-clutter and get rid of your stuff. You need to embrace a less is
more attitude. Edit your Facebook friend list. Purge negativity.
This post isn't about either of those ways of adding or
subtracting. This post isn't about Common Core Math either.
This post reminds me of an old allegorical piece of advice
by Coco Chanel. I had trouble finding her exact words online - there were many
different versions attributed to her. The gist of it is that a well-dressed
woman puts on all of the clothes and jewelry she wants to wear. Then right
before leaving the house, she looks in the mirror and removes one item.
She does not mean one shoe, a purse or a dress. What she
means is an accessory. So if the elegant woman is wearing a necklace, earrings
and a bracelet, maybe she removes the bracelet. Or she keeps all the jewelry
and removes the silk scarf.
Just because I quoted Coco Chanel once and paraphrased her
once does not mean that I admire her. But even if a person is a Nazi
sympathizer and a terrible anti Semite, they have small pockets of usefulness
and even wisdom.
Coco Chanel is not a person I would want to get to know, but
she was a fashion expert. I am not a fashion expert and I am not anti-Semite. I
am not nearly as well dressed.
This is not about clothes. It is about time. For today's
purposes, it is about what we call leisure time. It could be applied just as
easily to any old time. But I'm starting small.
It's the weekend. Or a vacation. It's a free evening or a
wide swath of time when you are not at work. Whatever it is, it is a time when
you would like to catch up on a few things and also have some fun.
So you make some plans. This is a good idea. If you don't make plans, time will just be
whittled away.
Some people make just the right amount of plans for that
specific day. My mother does this really well. I like to think I do too. But it
took some trial and error and a learning curve for me.
I got good at it. That's why I'm giving advice. If you're
already good at it, you can stop reading now and go do something else.
Here is a weekend scenario.
You plan a Saturday. You'll get up early to play golf with
friends you haven't seen in a while. You'll have lunch at the club. Then you'll
swing back home to take Billy and Tommy to baseball practice and while they're
with the coach you'll stop by the gourmet market for provisions for tonight's
barbecue. You'll drive back and watch practice for a few minutes, and take the
kids home. Then you plan to jump in the shower, crack open a beer and man the
charcoal in time to greet your friends and their kids for some adult fun and
conversation while the kids play together.
Maybe you're energized by this day. Maybe you've got this
time management thing down.
Or maybe on closer examination, you aren't so happy. You
feel frazzled. Your partner is angry because you were 20 minutes late in
picking up the kids and in your haste you forgot the beer for the barbecue. Or
maybe everything came together fine, but you didn't bet on the traffic and the
shower became a casualty. You feel hot and sticky and somewhat grouchy for the
rest of the day.
You can't wait to go to work on Monday because the weekend
of relaxing activities has left you feeling exhausted.
Here's another scenario. You plan a romantic long weekend
trip to NYC. It's a beautiful day and the weather is perfect. You surprise your
partner with a day of fun including a view from the top of the Empire State
building, a stroll through Central Park and an exploration of Chinatown topped
off with dinner. After that a cab ride to the theater district for the hottest
show.
The whirlwind may be perfect for just the two of you. Some
people are invigorated by this wall-to-wall activity.
But maybe your partner wanted to linger at one of these
places. Or it's actually over-stimulating for both of you. You find yourselves
bickering at dinner, and secretly wanting to go back to the hotel and bag the
Broadway play.
Add a child or two to the above plans and expect some meltdowns.
This is supposed to be fun.
If you're enjoying yourself most weekends, having a sense of
accomplishment and rejuvenation, are feeling good and refreshed after an
evening out, then keep doing what you're doing.
But if you are miserable, your friends are mad because you're
always late, your kids aren’t having as much fun as you imagined, you've
over-complicate and over-plan, you
wonder where the time goes, the neighborhood association is complaining because
you never cut the lawn, dinner is always sneaking up on you, you have a
pounding tension headache on vacation, and the office feels like a spa after
your ski excursion, then I have a simple solution.
Make your plans for the day. Then remove one thing from the
schedule.
There are fancier ways of managing your time. I'm suggesting
something simple. Tweak later when
you're better at this.
Subtract something. Just one thing. It’s the little black
dress of time management and it will change your life.
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